When Excuses Attack and the Snapshot in Time

So I heard someone say the other day that a person "must be an asshole because all Aries are assholes!" I was really unhappy and confronted the person about the statement.
This is what can happen when someone takes a little bit of knowledge in the metaphysical and extrapolates it out way too far. Unfortunately, I've seen it happen more than once. 

Let's talk about astrology for a moment. Your astrological makeup is a snapshot in time, that specific date, place, and hour of your birth. Studying it can be very revealing, and the same is true for looking at your solar return every year, and the astrological influences that surround various events. 

Tarot is the same way. It's an amazing tool that I love and can be very insightful, but it too is a snapshot in time. I can tell you what I see today and what will happen if nothing changes. But I can't tell you how you're going to change; that's free will, and no one can take that away from you. 

One client came into the shop to shout at me about a reading I had done for her one or two months prior. "YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT ME FINDING SOMEONE!" she yelled in a room filled with people. While I have no evidence to present on the topic, I'm betting that since I had read for that individual, something had changed. Might it have been pure circumstance? Yes. But I'm thinking it also could have been the attitude of my client that might have discouraged the would-be romance.

Here's an example. If I get a tarot reading about an upcoming party I've been invited to, and the tarot says "Don't go!", I have a number of different choices. I can choose to stay home, or I can choose to do something completely different, or I can choose to go to the party and ignore the tarot's message. That's up to me. 

So let's stretch it out further. I ignore the message and go to the party and I see an ex there who I don't particularly like. This may have been why the tarot said I shouldn't go, but once again, I have choices. I can spend a little time and then leave without engaging her, I can ignore her, I can try to make small talk, or I can be nasty to her and give her the greasy eyeball across the room. But all those choices are mine. Hopefully your tarot reader is out enjoying a party of his own, or at home writing an awesome blog, for example. 
He bears no responsibility for my actions, nor should he.

Astrology is the same thing. Your astrological sign doesn't give you the right to act any particular way. Sure, books say a lot of things about the different astrological signs, but I've met slow Aries people, fast Tauruses, reliable Geminis, Cancers who don't want kids, humble Leos, disorganized Virgos, single Libras, Scorpios with no sex drive, Sagittarius leaders, broke Capricorns, emotional Aquarians, and one or two realistic Pisces people. 

Lowest common denominator astrology is ineffective and results in some pretty bad stereotyping like I described in the first paragraph.

Here's the bottom line: Don't blame astrology, the tarot, or any other metaphysical tool for problems in your life. At the end of the day, these tools will help you cope, reveal strengths and weaknesses, and give insight into conditions that exist at a given moment in time, that snapshot I was talking about earlier. But none of it will take the place of the choice of a human being, and no person should define themselves by any one particular trait they have seen in themselves.

There are so many things you can't change in life. In genetics, you can't change who your parents are. In astrology, you can't change the moment you were born. With the tarot, you can't change the message you receive. But what can you change? Yourself. And to do that, the excuses need to hit the road. 

In the end, use the metaphysical to find out more about yourself and enhance the life you life through your own choices. Using any metaphysical tool, device, or technique as an excuse is just plain immature, even if that excuse is Mercury retrograde. 

[OK, maybe we can make a small exception for Mercury retrograde. But before you start that computer upgrade during it, make sure you remember that this was your bright idea. LOL.]